


Arts and Crafts

by stubliminalmessaging



Series: Fic!February 2015 [14]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3391295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stubliminalmessaging/pseuds/stubliminalmessaging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valentine’s Day crept up on Mickey Milkovich like a loan shark with a baseball bat ready to bust some kneecaps because he didn’t have any idea of what to do for Ian. As usual, Ian managed to save his ass by coming to him a week before the fourteenth and saying; “So it’s like this...”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arts and Crafts

**Author's Note:**

> this was prompted to me by [aphoenixinwriting](http://aphoenixinwriting.tumblr.com/): ian and mickey exchange valentines, but they have to homemade. mickey has no handicraft skills and his heart turns out looking like a kidney so he buys one. ian gets mad and so mickey gives him the kidney which ian loves

                Valentine’s Day crept up on Mickey Milkovich like a loan shark with a baseball bat ready to bust some kneecaps because he didn’t have any idea of what to do for Ian. As usual, Ian managed to save his ass by coming to him a week before the fourteenth and saying; “So it’s like this...”

 

                Ian established only one rule for Valentine’s Day: they could not get each other a gift. They could only make homemade cards and they would spend the day together and that would be their ghetto Valentine’s Day celebration. Mickey agreed right away since he’d been lost on what to do before Ian suggested it.

 

                He only realized after their conversation that he had absolutely no crafting skills and that Ian would inevitably make way better crafts than him. He was always better at this kind of thing, plus he grew up with Debbie who was the craft queen.

 

                Mickey sat down at the Milkovich table one afternoon with construction paper, markers, and glitter glue and after two hours he swore he’d never get within ten feet of the craft section of Wal Mart again in his life. He also might have burned the remainder of the construction paper and the glitter glue – he couldn’t wash himself enough times to get all of the sticky shit completely off. He feared it was permanently embedded in his skin and cursed the second he’d thought it’d been a good idea.

 

                As if to add insult to glitter-covered injury his card looked like absolute shit. It was supposed to be a heart shape but it looked more like a kidney. He’d redone the shape like five times and each turned out worse than the last until he finally gave up and started squeezing glitter onto the first kidney-shaped-heart he’d cut out. The glitter was all clumpy and patchy and kept sticking to his fingers. He smeared it all over everything until he finally lost his temper and threw the tube across the room.

 

                He sat fuming for a few minutes, picking the dried glitter glue off his fingertips and glaring at his piece of shit Valentine’s card, contemplating what to do next. He thought about doodling stick figures of him and Ian but he thought that would be too gay so he just wrote ‘ _to Ian, from Mickey_ ’ along the top of it and called it a day.

 

                As he inspected it more he began to hate the empty space not covered by glitter and so, thinking it couldn’t get any uglier than it was, he opted to draw the stick figures on the card. He got the height difference wrong (“accidentally”) and he couldn’t find the right colour green for Ian’s eyes, but after scribbling a shock of orange hair on stick-Ian’s head he decided he was finished.

 

                He looked it over one last time and cursed, crumpling it up. He shoved it out of sight in one of his dresser drawers in his room when he went to go get a jacket. He threw the jacket on and stomped off to the store. He’d have to buy Ian a card because he sure as fuck could never make something good enough for Ian.

 

-

 

                “What the fuck, Mickey,” Ian said when Mickey presented him the card.

 

                Mickey shrugged, trying to let Ian’s disappointment roll off him but the guilt ate him up. The card had a little ginger kitten on it and he’d thought it was cute or something but he’d seen through it to Mickey breaking their agreement.

 

                “I tried making you a card but it was really shitty,” Mickey told him, watching as Ian frowned down at the card. “Trust me, you’re better off not seeing it.”

 

                “I don’t care how bad you thought it looked. We had a deal,” Ian said, looking up at Mickey. “And I think you know I’d love anything you made for me, shitty looking or otherwise.”

 

                He threw Mickey one last dirty look and pressed his own card against Mickey’s chest. Mickey’s hands came up and took it and Ian turned on his heel, striding out of the room. Mickey heard the front door slam too, indicating Ian’s departure from the house.

 

                Mickey sighed and looked down at the card Ian had made. Of course it was fucking perfect, all properly shaped with just the right amount of decoration and flawless loopy writing on it. ‘ _To Mickey, the love of my life, Ian, xoxo_ ,’ in calculated cursive that Ian probably had to practice a lot.

 

                He spent all day wallowing in the guilt of disappointing Ian so thoroughly. The more he looked at Ian’s perfect card the more he thought about how bad his card was and how their cards represented more about him and Ian than just their craft skills. They were like physical representations of them as people: Ian perfect and honest and him messy and shitty and so basic it hurt.

 

                When Ian came back home that night, Mickey spilled it all out. He knew once he’d started talking that Ian wasn’t even still mad about it but he’d gone all in and he couldn’t stop. He told Ian all of his feelings about his card and about Ian’s and what he actually saw when he looked at them and how he didn’t feel like he deserved someone like Ian.

 

                After he’d finished puking his guts out at Ian’s feet he finished by finally giving Ian the card he’d made, a bit crumpled from being shoved in a drawer but no less ugly. Ian took one look at Mickey’s kidney card and nearly dropped it when he rushed in to kiss the shorter man.

 

                “I love it,” he murmured against Mickey’s mouth, hands on his shoulders sliding down to wrap around his waist. “And I love you.”

 

                “Ditto,” Mickey told him, looking up into Ian’s eyes.

 

                His kidney card got a little more crumpled because Ian did drop it this time but after they’d finished banging out their feelings he still smoothed it out and stuck it to the bulletin board at his desk at work. Ian’s card ended up tucked into the sun visor in Mickey’s car, always in view.


End file.
